"Legislator wants to take home-school law back to the Dark Ages," blares a headline on the Web site of the Home School Legal Defense Association. ...

Approval of the bill would mean a huge change in home schooling in Nebraska. ...

The bill would require annual standardized testing of home-school children, or, alternatively, state approval of a lesson plan, diary or other written evidence of subjects taught and other educational activities, examples of student work and a home-school assessment of progress.

If state officials decided that a progress has been unsatisfactory, they could require the child to be sent to an accredited school. ...

As Schimek says, there is little evidence on how well children are being educated in home schools.

But her bill goes much further than simply providing accountability and ensuring that home-school children are receiving an adequate education. It sets up a system of state intervention.

The dramatic change in the status quo seems unnecessarily onerous. The bill would even require that parents pay for the state testing.

A more reasonable approach would be to establish a simple requirement of annual testing and leave it at that. The test results could provide some benefit to students and parents by identifying problems that need to be addressed. ...

State government should ante up for the cost of the testing. Home-school parents already are saving taxpayers thousands of dollars each year by not sending their children to public schools. ...

A scaled-back version of Schimek's proposal has merit.

Lincoln Journal Star